Factors to consider in choosing the ‘right’ journal/publisher

Every researcher/author may have different ways to define the right journal/book series or publisher for publishing their research. 

• For those who want their research to have a high impact, the level of the journal (based on its impact factor or ranking) can be an important factor.
• For those who are in a hurry in publishing their research, they must consider the speed of the publication process of the journal/book series. 
• For those who have a budget limitation and want to have gold open access feature-to increase the readability and outreach of the article, it is important to know the cost for the gold open access feature. 
• Or for those who want to get a prize for their article, some journals provide an award for the best article.
• For those who want to consider all the above-mentioned factors, the reputation of the publisher may be relevant for you.
• For those who work in an international think tank/NGO, their publishing process is actually also robust like in a good journal! In WRI, they use a similar editorial manager platform like in a journal and the review involves about 6 reviewers from academic and development practitioner background. Also, they have a really good designer to support lay-outing and data visualization for the paper. In addition, WRI also helps to disseminate our research findings to the targeted audience such as policymakers.

Some publishers like Elsevier have a website called Journal Finder to help you to find more information on some above-mentioned factors.

If you work around the environment, sustainability, and resilience topics, the table below could be relevant for you to have an overview of the above-mentioned factors in different journals, publisher, and book series around the topics. All these publishers are indexed with 'doi'.

PUBLISHERS	JOURNAL/ BOOK SERIES	QUARTILES/ LEVELS	SCIMAGO JOURNAL RANK [1]	TIME TO 1ST DECISION	TIME TO PUBLICATION [2]	COST/PRIZE
ELSEVIER	Global ecology and conservation	Q1	1.26	1 month	1 month	Gold open access: $1,650
MDPI	Sustainability	Q2	0.55	5 weeks	10 days	Gold open access: 1700 CHF
SPRINGER	Disaster risk reduction			5 months	12 months*	-
THE UNIVERSITY OF KASSEL, GERMANY & FEDERATION OF GERMAN SCIENTISTS	Future of food: Journal on food, agriculture, and society	Q3	0.18	6 months	1 month	-
World resources institute	Environmental policies/economics on land use, energy, climate, cities	-		2 months	7 months	Must involve WRI staff as an author
DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA	Geography of the tropical environment			5 weeks	3 weeks	Best article award: 1 million IDR

Memilih jurnal yang tepat adalah salah satu tips penting dalam proses publikasi hasil riset. Ada lima tips penting lainnya untuk publikasi hasil riset di jurnal bereputasi. Klik disini untuk tahu lebih lanjut tentang detail proses publikasi di jurnal-jurnal di atas atau jurnal bereputasi lainnya.

Read more:
How long will it take to publish a paper: Link 1 and Link 2

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[1] An alternative to the impact factor, a measure of the scientific influence of scholarly journals that account for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where the citations come from

[2] Manuscript acceptance to article first online